It's Not the Caffeine in Your Coffee

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock…. You waste away the hours….

It’s the coffee, you say. But let me tell you about our common friend’s dissertation on insomnia….

Staying awake for the most part of the day (or should I say, night….) isn’t, at all, that easy. It’s obvious. I understand that. This is, most especially, difficult if you are trying to grapple with a multitude of seemingly unsolvable issues and concerns… issues and concerns that pertain, for the most part, to your personal stake in this world. And in your effort to try to solve and understand everything, you drown yourself in coffee to stay awake.

Flashes of events, incidents, words, faces, sounds, and what if’s dominate the landscape of your mind till you no longer have the space to squeeze into more of such, right? Random thoughts run amuck, blasting away every inch of order you have painfully garnered through the years. Accepted truths are now in question; rules of thumb chopped away. In this state, you roll over the creases of your sheets incessantly… you shutter the light with nothing, eyelids offering no respite from the vividness of your anxiety, your wonder, your hopes, and your fears… You try to cloak it with a roomful of smoke from your cigarette. But a pack is never enough. A ream? Not even. Futile, is it not? You still see the radiance of despair piercing through the gray swirls in your mind.

The silence offers nothing as well as your blood boils over with the intense heat of the noise in your head and, sometimes, your heart. You try to quell it by burying your head in a pile of pillows… but you only get to realize the futility of such as the decibels coming from the din of your rambling thoughts get heightened by the increased silence. Then, you play an all too familiar song to soften the sound of the banging gong of restlessness. And you realize that you are one big acoustic deflector. The strains of the guitar from the music prove to be useless as it dissipates in the air. The noise is always inside you. It’s never outside. It never will be outside one’s self.

You get weak as the seconds flutter away… Ah yes, and you become fearful that as the seconds do flutter away, you realize that the untouchable itch of your mind’s rashes will stay as the days pass. You develop loose skin formation under your eyes - big enough to hold a silver dollar, dark enough to pass for a misplaced eyeshadow makeup. You breathe deeply. You heave an onus-filled sigh. And you get nothing but dirty air. And you contaminate yourself even more. You deteriorate physically.

Then you slowly die inside. You feel the ebbing of the human spirit, the will to trudge on slip away.

Even further, you see your Life waste away (just like how you are wasting away right now…) and hope for nothing anymore. I tell you, you will get there. You will dry up till nothing else comes out of you.

A vicious cycle, insomnia is… that is what our good friend tells us.

Then one day, this close friend of ours awakes, realizes and proffers that the lack of sleep is the root of all his problems. Of all the most probable and most obvious of causes, it is your lack of sleep that spawns the viral infection which eats up your productivity, your resolve, your dreams. You are awake but you are left behind. You are not awake to capture the moment by moment fulfillment of Life. Hours, nay, Days…. well not even…. Years, I should say, are taken away from you while you are wide awake. Every single thing you wanted to solve and understand passes you by. What irony….

It’s not the caffeine in your coffee, you fool! It’s the caffeine in your mind, your soul, and your heart formed by the brew of your endless cups of anxiety, of wonder, of too much hoping, and of fear. You eagerly downed and savored the taste of every cup… all in the hope of solving and understanding everything immediately.

You shout, but nothing comes out… you are sucked right into oblivion.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock….

It’s 4:15 am. The reflection of my face startles me….. been talking to myself again.

It’s time for me to sleep…..